After Hurricane Isaac swamped hundreds of homes in Louisiana last August, and dozens of residents in New York and New Jersey drowned during Hurricane Sandy a month later, the need for better surge warnings was painfully clear.

And yet the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season arrived Saturday without new warnings in place.

Given the small size of the Hurricane Center staff, it doesn't seem likely that the maps can be completed during this hurricane season. But that still ought to be the goal -- and Congress should make sure that the center has the resources it needs to finish the work quickly.

The Hurricane Center had already said that a separate surge warning system wouldn't be done until 2015, which will be a decade after Hurricane Katrina's monstrous surge did grievous damage in Louisiana and Mississippi. The new system will include storm surge watch and warning advisories to complement the existing tropical storm advisories issued four times a day during a storm.

But the color-coded maps -- which will provide a simple visual signal of how high water will be above ground level -- needed to have been in place by now.

Center officials have said they will work to better explain surge risks as storms form this season and to use clearer language. That is essential. People need to know how high water is expected to be in terms that are meaningful.

Hurricane forecasters predict this season will be extremely active. In their annual spring forecast, Colorado State University meteorologists Philip Klotzbach and William Gray predicted 18 named storms, nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes. That compares with an average between 1981-2010 of 12 named storms, 6.5 hurricanes and two major hurricanes each year.

The forecasters also said there is a higher than usual chance of a hurricane hitting the U.S. coast -- and a greater than usual chance of a storm hitting somewhere along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

So the need for good information on surge risk will be vital this summer.

The Hurricane Center officially dropped any mention of surge from the Saffir-Simpson numerical categories in 2009 because it wasn't truly reflected in the scale. That decision came after surge from Hurricane Ike -- a Category 2 storm -- overwhelmed much of south Louisiana, far from where the storm made landfall in Galveston, Texas.

The subsequent lack of an understandable surge warning, though, has proved hazardous. Isaac and Sandy both were classified as Category 1 hurricanes as they moved toward land last fall. Since those numbers indicate wind -- not the force or amount of water in the storm -- coastal residents didn't fully comprehend the danger.

There is detailed information on surge available during a storm, but it has not been disseminated in an understandable and useful way. Surge also hasn't been emphasized to the public as it should be. "A lot of people think that surges are a coastal problem, a coastal event: 'I live inland, so this is not my problem. I'm not vulnerable,' " surge team leader Jamie Rhome said in December. "Surge is not a coastal event. It can go well inland, 30, 40, 50 miles inland in some locations."

The Hurricane Center, the National Weather Service and the media must change the conversation about surge. The colored maps being developed by the Hurricane Center would be tremendously helpful in that regard.

They will be based on high-resolution topography information, which will be combined with data from individual storms. The surge team at the Hurricane Center has been working to decrease the time it takes to create the maps for a storm.

In addition to the technical issues involved in creating the maps, officials have to figure out how best to distribute them to local forecast offices and emergency management agencies.

To be sure, that process is highly complicated. And the Hurricane Center's small staff is overburdened.

But with a busy storm season beginning, and millions of people vulnerable to floodwaters, surge warnings must take priority.